


lives and loves and spirits

by alovelylight



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Character Study, F/F, F/M, Ficlet, Fluff and Angst, Gender Identity, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 05:08:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13629246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alovelylight/pseuds/alovelylight
Summary: It was a self-made tragedy riddled with his self-hate, Madi’s heart of honor and Flint’s eyes reflecting disappointment on that hill. He had never been good at loving people, but he did love them in all their elusive dreams—his pirate paradise and her island of freedom. Silver, for his part, wasn’t the sort who thought destiny was cut out for him.(Or: ficlets exploring the sexuality of various characters in Black Sails)





	lives and loves and spirits

To Jack, Anne was like a war-torn answer; his one constant, the underlying light in the darkness that pervaded his world so many times. He couldn’t imagine a future devoid of her—the banner of red hair, the understated smile, the shades of naked emotion he had seen throughout their years at sea and battle—and he didn’t want to.

But having her in his bed meant having Max, too. That lioness of pride and thunder, perched at the mouth of danger with the effortless grace that made him envy her so much. It would take him a certain amount of rum to admit it, but he could see why Anne loved her—Max was tame-eyed wilderness, tempting men and women to venture into the forest behind her door. Anne had pulled him through that threshold, and he followed her (he would follow her anywhere) out of loyalty, but that loyalty would eventually grow into something bigger.

“You know,” Max said to him on one quiet night; Anne had gone to sleep, her head gently tucked into the crook of his arm, her legs entwined with Max’s, “sometimes I think I am more like you than you are at times.”

“Funny you should said that,” he drawled, his mouth twitching into a smile. “I feel just the same.”

He had never been great at sharing. Even in boyhood, he had looked towards the realm of stories and felt like it belonged at the tips of his fingers. In the stage of gilded myths, his would shine from the shadow of the curtains. But once he’s stripped all the layers of storytelling away, made them fall around his feet like shredded fabric, the truth was staring him in the face.

And he learned to fall in love with it.

* * *

She had let love gnaw at her heart, taking away with its teeth the walls she had safely built to keep her demons away.

The first woman Eleanor fell in love with was Max, with her siren song and her hunger for the world. She would agonize over the life-changing decision she made that night—Max’s eyes a plea for escape, her life hanging by a thread—but she would promptly shut out any doubt. There was no room in her heart for doubt, for selfish want; an island was hanging off her shoulders.

She thought Charles would’ve understood that. In her teenage years, she appreciated the impressive figure he cut in the dark of her girlish fantasies. He held her close, and breathed her in like his life depended on it, and she feared it. It was easy to pretend they were tetherless from each other, bereft of wanton need; need was an enemy to the queen she was making herself become.

When she fell in love with Woodes, the animal of need inside her was becoming something else. More refined and delicate, toeing the line of surrender and renewal at the same time. The ghosts of her old lovers stayed with her—she vanquished one, and found her way back to the other—but Woodes was different.

She stepped into her newly-made role in civilization and loved him the way she knew how: masking her blade of fragility beneath the shine of beauty.

* * *

Throughout his years at sea, Billy had learned how to narrowly dodge the sly-eyed jokes of his fellow sailors on the question of his apparent celibacy. While they spent their nights wasted in revelry at the brothel, he liked to retreat to the quiet and let his mind drift to the water—always tethered to his one home.

He would not hesitate to admit that he didn’t know everything about the world, but he did know that somewhere in the expanse of it, there were people like him. But he had spent a lifetime being lost from his place, torn from his parents and thrusted into this band of brothers he now made home with. And that was enough for him.

* * *

He had asked her once if he was enough for her. Madi had always prided herself in her strong conviction, in that clarity of vision that made her a capable leader—but John made her face truths she hadn’t considered. Before stepping into her life with that stubborn-eyed steel, she never considered the love of a man in it.

As a girl, the dreams that came to her at night consisted of boyish feet climbing the trees of the island, the masculine strength of her bones insisting to her that she could save anyone from anywhere. Another princess in a tower, or an exotic maiden from the cluster of her imaginings; it was almost as if another person lived inside her, a part of but not separate from the girl she was.

But loving John swept her from those dreams. In his arms, she wanted to take her time and explore each possibility. This was new to him too—she could sense his nervousness, perhaps from fear of possibly hurting her. When she explained to him the man she became in her dreams, the war-heaving voice and the silent strength, he kissed her more. And that was enough.

* * *

Miranda perching on his knee, Thomas rested his chin on her shoulder as he penned down a letter. James had issued an invitation to an opera, and Miranda had insisted that they go. He himself was not particularly fond of the opera—the theatricality of it all was lost on him—but his wife adored it. She loved anything having to do with flights of passion; it was one of the things that drew him to her.

“You ridicule romantic shows of passion, and yet you are the most romantic soul I’ve ever met,” she teased. “Oh, and tell James to bring back my copy of Dryden.”

“I don’t know just what you’re talking about, darling,” he playfully grumbled, pulling her into a kiss. “I have no flair for the romantic.”

But he stained his parchment, the coded words and subtle yearnings taking on a life of their own as he thought of the man who would read them; this man who brought a new palette of colors into his and Miranda’s world and turned it into a new landscape of truth.

Unaware of the smile growing on his face, he knew he was in love.

* * *

He had told Flint, in the middle of the deep blue, that they would work better as partners than opposed, and his life had never been the same ever since. For they had haunted the shark together, and he had gave all of his fight to his and Flint’s survival, and he had never sympathized with a creature more.

Billy would later say that Flint had such an effect on people: he took away their sacrifices and used it for his own dressing. But Billy was of another plane of existence; it may be a stupidly arrogant thing to think, but sometimes Silver felt as if he and Flint inhabited another journey different from all others, protected as well as charred from the story of their names. How they bled into each other, impossible to truly separate even after the war has gone to dust.

It was as much of Flint’s war as Madi’s. Silver loved her in the weakness of his own strength, this resentful grappling with power that rendered him useless. For the first time in a long while, he wanted for better—these dreams he constructed with a wife and a home. But Flint and Madi both had revolution in themselves, and he could never measure up to such a thing. Even when caught in the light of their passions, he never expected to be enough.

It was a self-made tragedy riddled with his self-hate, Madi’s heart of honor and Flint’s eyes reflecting disappointment on that hill. He had never been good at loving people, but he did love them in all their elusive dreams—his pirate paradise and her island of freedom. Silver, for his part, wasn’t the sort who thought destiny was cut out for him.  



End file.
